


here, night comes early

by powerandpathos



Series: hybrid child [1]
Category: 19天 - Old先 | 19 Days - Old Xian
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Angst, Inspired by Hybrid Child, M/M, Mongolia, Sentient Androids, Song Dynasty, all inaccuracies are my own, please heed the archive warning, request
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:35:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 19,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26091253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/powerandpathos/pseuds/powerandpathos
Summary: ‘Mo Guan Shan will lead the siege.’Guan Shan jolts, mouth falling open. Faintly, he hears He Tian swear beside him, and Lu Gao has taken a step forward.‘Me?’ he asks. ‘General—’‘You have been eager to prove yourself as of late,’ interrupts the general with a smile. ‘I am giving you an advantage.’Guan Shan bites his tongue.No, you’re not. You’re giving me a death penalty for my father’s wrongdoings.-19 Days Request inspired by the manga/anime 'Hybrid Child' by Shungiku Nakamuru, and set during the Song Dynasty at a time of Mongol expansion, featuring themes of: war, military history, sentient androids.
Relationships: He Cheng/Brother Qiu (19 Days), He Tian/Mo Guanshan (19 Days), Jian Yi/Zhan Zhengxi (19 Days)
Series: hybrid child [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1894429
Comments: 25
Kudos: 163





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So so many thanks to Chris ([@kaminari3112](https://kaminari3112.tumblr.com/)) for requesting me once again to write this fascinating and heart-breaking story. There will be two parts to the historical story, and a third part set in a different, future universe, which explores similar themes. Thank you to [Emma](http://plumb19.tumblr.com) for proofing this fic for me - I have taken some historical liberties with this story, and all errors are mine. If you would like to have a fic written for you, please visit my Tumblr to see how!

**Glossary**

**__**_tümen_ \- the Mongol term for a unit of 10,000 soldiers. 

Lin’an - the capital of the Song Empire (modern day Hangzhou).

Töregene - the female ruler _(khatun)_ of the Mongol Empire following the death of her husband, Ögedei, until the election of her eldest son Güyük in 1246. Her husband, Ögedei, was the third son of Genghis Khan.

Jin dynasty - a dynasty that ruled for nearly 100 hundred years (1115–1234) after the Jurchen people seized what had previously been the North Song Empire. The Jurchen were later defeated in 1234, eight years earlier than the setting of this story, when the Song people joined forces with the Mongols.

 _siheyuan -_ a traditional walled Chinese complex/estate, literally meaning ‘quadrangle’, composed of various buildings set around a courtyard.

///

**_It is AD 1242. The Mongols and the Song Dynasty have defeated the Jin Empire to quash their power and reclaim the Song territories that were taken a hundred years ago. Some members of the Song Dynasty fought on behalf of the Mongols to defeat the Jin and are still loyal to them—even while the Mongols now entreat on Song territory and threaten to destroy the Song empire. He Tian’s father, General He, is one of four men who was given the position of general of a tümen (overseeing approximately ten thousand men) by the Mongols during the wars against the Jin, and still maintains this title._ **

**_Mo Guan Shan’s father also fought against the Jin during the wars, but resented the overbearing presence of the Mongols in his home territory. To prevent this resistance, he was charged with treason and imprisoned by General He. Tensions are rising now between the Han Chinese people of the Song Dynasty and the Mongols, and war is on the horizon._ **

///

Mo Guan Shan is summoned that day. He is bathing in the Baotu Springs, when the hub of Jinan has not yet awoken and the water is quiet. He knows that a karst aquifer lies beneath him; water, he is told, seeps through pockets made in higher ground, falls down through stone, and is pushed up into the spring. A roofed pavilion stands tall at the spring’s entrance, offering nesting opportunities for cuckoos as winter comes to its end, and the blossoming tendrils of a willow tree skim the water’s surface like a lover’s hair flitted over a shoulder.

There is a single candle lit within the pavilion’s adjacent teahouse, wax spilling on the sill and its keeper not yet awoken from her cot. Guan Shan doesn’t mind the solitude. For months now he has let himself in through the gates before the sun has fully risen in the east and made his peace with the water. It warms to him, slowly, and he to it. 

This morning there is a faint breeze and water laps across his skin; the shadow of a pear tree lingers over the spot where he’s nestled. It has been quiet here since the war, and it will be quieter still in the coming years. 

He’s there early today: steam creeps from its surface, and a quarrel of sparrows cuts through the cloud-like columns climbing to a crisp blue sky. At thirteen he might have shuddered as he dipped his toes over the edge of the pavilion, unprotected by its awning. Now an invisible hand presses gently against the sequential ridges of his spine and pushes. Guan Shan doesn’t mind its coldness anymore.

He’s been there only ten minutes when Lu Gao arrives with a robe and piece of cloth extended in both arms. He’s breathing hard and his legs look to be shaking from a fast ride. Guan Shan considers the firm, reluctant form of his mouth with dread, and the bleak set of his eyes with fear. Guan Shan sinks lower into the water until it is level with his upper lip and he can breathe only through his nose.

‘You know I don’t want to be a bearer of bad news this early,’ says Lu Gao, looking down at him.

Guan Shan glowers at him so only his narrowed eyes and the harsh lines of his eyebrows are directed at him, peaked like the valley of a malcontented mountain. By now, his body has adjusted. His skin is pleasantly cold, his blood pumping smoothly beneath it like the water beneath the karsts. There’s a slight platform below the water here where the tips of his toes can just scrape the rough stone bed beneath. He finds it, straightens. Only his mouth rises from the water.

‘How bad?’ he asks.

‘General He has demanded an audience of all commanding officers. You’re expected to be in attendance.’

Guan Shan swears. ‘When?’

Lu Gao looks at him as if to say, _Yesterday._

Guan Shan clambers out angrily. Water sloshes around him and splatters against the pavilion edge where Lu Gao stands, specks of water pockmarking his slippered feet. A wren, bobbing on the surface, squawks from the disturbance, the spring now bubbling and unsettled with a current of sheer disgruntled force.

Guan Shan dries his skin roughly with the cloth Lu Gao provides, and lets his friend drape the robe around his shoulders as he marches into the pavilion and finds his clothes neatly folded in the dressing room. Beads of water still collect at the loose hairs at his nape. He leaves them be. He’ll be warm soon; he will need to ride fast to the general’s home. Quickly, Guan Shan dresses in an auspicious red _shenyi_ robe, and the morning has warmed too much to allow for his coat, which he leaves draped across the back of his horse.

‘Can’t have a fuckin’ minute in peace,’ Guan Shan grumbles as he follows Lu Gao from the gated wall of the springs, where his small, grey mare stands nosing at a bucket of feed.

‘You’re the commanding officer of a thousand men, my friend,’ Lu Gao reminds him. ‘You’re not entitled to a second.’

///

‘Nice of you to join,’ He Tian mutters when Guan Shan steps into place in General He’s courtyard. ‘How was your bath?’

The estate is the biggest property in the city, two-storeyed and sprawling. Most dwellings in the city are tightly packed wooden structures that tower upwards and creak with the winds. General He’s estate is a rambling complex of expensive stone and lakeside pavilions. He has his own temple, stable, and guest residences; the gardens ramble with bamboo and plum blossom and the chitter of lapwings. 

It is built on high ground, steep enough to make out Mount Tai in the distance with no obstructions, to which Guan Shan and He Tian used to run when they were younger and still in training—when victory of war had been won and there was no cloud of another on the horizon. Now it’s as if the skies are grey and blackened and Guan Shan can feel the charge of lightning on his skin.

He glares at He Tian, falling into step beside him along with eight other men, ruffled by the early hour.

‘It’s been two months since we were last called,’ Guan Shan replies, thick with frustration. ‘I’m not gonna forfeit all my time for _this_.’

‘Don’t tell my father that,’ He Tian warns quietly, a smirk toying at his lips. ‘He expects your firstborn, not to mention your time.’

Guan Shan snorts, and they both turn to the steps leading down from the main house as the sound of heavy footsteps approach. General He’s armoured frame fills the doorway of the house. He is not a small man—not by any means—and he makes his own tall, broadly built sons look average comparatively, which succeeds in making Guan Shan feel like he’s been built in miniature. 

Dark hair and thick brows owe to the increasing severity of his own features: a sharp, solid jawline; shrewd, coal-black eyes; an unsmiling mouth. Guan Shan thinks—not considering the fact often—that the softness of He Tian’s lips can be attributed only to his late mother. 

Ten men stand to attention before the general, each in command of a thousand men, and General He in command of all of them. They have not had to heed an order for some time. The general wears his black hair long and plaited, and Guan Shan is struck by the sight of it. How much closer has the man brought them to being subsumed entirely by the Mongols? When will they abandon their Han Chinese dialect and start speaking Mongolian? When will they leave their gardens and solid walls and take to horseback and felt yurts and the steppes of the north?

Guan Shan glances around him at the splendour of the _siheyuan_. The general might plait his hair and borrow the Mongols’ words, but Guan Shan knows he will not give up this.

‘The Song have killed one of our envoys,’ is the first thing General He says. He makes no apologies for the early hour or short notice, and his words are a rumbling echo across the flagstone. A row of magnolia trees sway to Guan Shan’s right; he holds himself steady. 

‘Who did we send?’ asks He Tian, the first confident enough to speak.

The general’s hardened stare falls on his son. ‘A man named Yisü.’

Across the courtyard, there is a pause. 

‘A Mongol,’ says He Tian eventually. 

_So not ‘our’ man,_ Guan Shan thinks. _A_ _Mongol, not Han—which one are we anymore?_

‘What happened to him, General?’ asks Lu Gao.

The general’s lip curls. ‘The _khatun_ offered them peace. She sent Yisü with a peace treaty proposal, and the Song Empire responded with swords and a cut throat. They have no intention of resolution.’

Murmurs break out among the officers. The Song Empire has been under siege since they joined forces with the Mongols to defeat the Jurchen Jin Empire in the north— _before_ they joined forces. Guan Shan narrows his eyes. If there’s an opportunity for a ceasefire and resolution, why haven’t the Song taken it? Under the _khatun_ ’s orders, General He and the other three _tümen_ generals have already seized the old Song capitals that were taken by the Jin. 

‘She wants us to retaliate,’ Guan Shan guesses, murmuring. 

He Tian and Lu Gao both glance at him. Ahead, the general’s eyes are narrowed. His smile is thin and taut.

‘If the Song do not want peace,’ he says, ‘then they can only expect war. They have killed one of our own for this. Tomorrow, you will lead the _tümen_ to their capital and seize it.’

The courtyard is silent. Lin'an is over two weeks' ride away, across familiar but difficult terrain. There will be rivers to cross, banks still wet with wintry rainfall, and they will lose carriages and horses to mudslide. How many men will they lose? Guan Shan’s fists clench at his side. There is no sense in trekking five hundred miles south to a city when there are other cohorts already stationed nearer? General He Cheng or General Qiu, surely, would be more suitable. 

_The Mongols can’t trust them like they can trust General He,_ Guan Shan thinks, knowing the truth. _He would sell his own fucking son to the them if they gave him power. He’s probably considered it._

‘Mo Guan Shan will lead the siege.’

Guan Shan jolts, mouth falling open. Faintly, he hears He Tian swear beside him, and Lu Gao has taken a step forward.

‘Me?’ he asks. ‘General—’

‘You have been eager to prove yourself as of late,’ interrupts the general with a smile. ‘I am giving you an advantage.’

Guan Shan bites his tongue. _No, you’re not. You’re giving me a death penalty for my father’s wrongdoings._

‘He’s too young,’ protests one of the officers, a man older than the general. He’s not protective of Guan Shan—he’s jealous.

‘General,’ another says. ‘Is this _wise?_ After his _father…?’_

‘Taking orders from a _woman?’_ asks a third.

He Tian steps forward. ‘Father,’ he says, speaking lowly, ‘don’t you intend to lead this yourself?’

‘I will be staying here with three thousand men on Töregene’s orders. The city is a vital stronghold. General He Qiu will adjoin with you en route with three thousand of his troops.’

He Tian frowns. ‘Staying? For what reason? We’re far enough north that the Song wouldn’t dare to pose an attack—’

‘They are Toregene’s orders.’ The general lifts his brows, gestures to Guan Shan. ‘Are you all so eager to shame your comrade?’

The men falter.

‘Commander Mo is the youngest officer among us.’ Guan Shan can hear He Tian’s teeth grind together. ‘General He could lead this on his own—or General Qiu. He and his men are already south in Jiankang. Why lend us men when he could launch the attack on Lin’an himself—’

‘General He’s priority is the Caizhou garrison, and the order was not for General Qiu but ours.’

‘Father—’

‘Obey your orders, Officer He.’

 _Stop,_ Guan Shan wants to say. His eardrums feel cold; he watches the courtyard scene unfold in a way that feels like he’s standing behind himself. It’s quieter than he thinks it should be, as if he’s at the spring and has just slipped beneath the surface; the water is over his mouth, nose, and ears. Sound is warbled—all he can do is see. He thinks he’d like to sink lower, have the water swallow him whole and drag him through the limestone karsts. The new spring air feels suddenly very cool. He knows why the general has chosen him. He knows there isn’t a fucking thing he can do. 

‘If you want to deliver your _khatun_ a victory,’ says He Tian, one last-ditch attempt, ‘then it will require a great deal of experience.’

It doesn’t matter. He Tian can try all he wants to; his father is the last person who can be charmed by his charisma—his smooth, ruthless tongue and impervious smile. The general’s word is final, and he stares at Guan Shan while he issues it: 

‘Experience,’ he muses. ‘Tell me, my son, is this not an excellent opportunity for Mo Guan Shan to get it?

///

They return to He Tian’s _siheyuan,_ which He Tian shares with He Cheng when the general isn’t dispatched to the Mongol garrison in Caizhou, and He Tian fetches two steaming bowls of noodles from a local market near the house. They let the broth cool while they sit on the veranda of the courtyard. 

The complex is smaller than He Tian’s father’s, but the small clusters of magnolia and carnation bushes bloom brighter in the spring and the neighbourhood is quieter at night. There is a pond shaded beneath the boughs of a blossoming dogwood tree, fed into from a stream that runs down off the rivers of Mount Tai, and in summer the water stays cool enough for Guan Shan to dip his toes into. Beneath the surface, the koi fish are fat and gleaming, their bright scales catching the light. 

They’re too far to peer into it now. Instead, Guan Shan remains seated, and he frowns at the landscape before him. His stomach feels tight and twisted, and the rustling of new leaves around the garden sets his teeth on edge. He imagines himself leading ten thousand men to a city he has never been to, five hundred miles south across unfamiliar territory. He imagines banishing people of his own blood and creed outside their own city walls, killing some, the rest left to roam like refugees. He imagines every way it will go wrong. 

Of course—this is what General He wants.

‘I don’t know why you even bothered,’ he mutters. Beside him, He Tian has been sitting silent and watchful, waiting for Guan Shan to speak. ‘You knew he’d get what he wanted.’

‘You’ll get cut down the minute you set in Lin'an,’ says He Tian. ‘I had to at least try.’

Guan Shan’s lip curls. He’s used to He Tian’s criticism, his scathing remarks about Guan Shan’s aptitude and self-worth. He passes them out like schooled assessments, well-rehearsed and expertly exacted, as if he knows just how to place them, a knife that knows the opening of Guan Shan’s rib cage intimately in order to find his heart. 

Guan Shan always recalls that He Tian learnt from the best. 

‘D’you think I _want_ this?’ Guan Shan retorts quietly. ‘D’you think I’m happy with the lot he’s given me?’

‘You stayed silent,’ He Tian said. Then, before Guan Shan could argue: ‘I know you think like your father does—your heart is with the Song. I was surprised you didn’t let it show.’

‘You think I was gonna get myself arrested for treason in front of nine other commanding officers?’ Guan Shan’s head whips around. _‘That wasn’t a confession.’_

He Tian chuckles. ‘Your secret’s safe with me,’ he teases. Guan Shan isn’t sure anything is particularly safe where He Tian is concerned. ‘But I’ll admit—you’ve never sought out glory before. It’s uncharacteristic of you to want this now.’

‘You don’t know where my allegiances lie,’ Guan Shan said. ‘You don’t know what I want.’

He can feel the heavy weight of He Tian’s gaze on him, sharply scrutinous, as if he’s expecting Guan Shan to begin spilling his secrets with a single, indulgent glance. Guan Shan isn’t—not to him. They knew each other as children; there’ve moments, as they’ve gotten older, where they’ve liked one another. Those times are short-lived, and Guan Shan finds them strange and confusing. He’s almost grateful when normalcy resumes—the sharp arguments on the training grounds, He Tian’s snide remarks that set Guan Shan to flame like a spark at the wick of gunpowder.

After a few minutes of silence, Guan Shan says, ‘You know, after all these fuckin’ years, I don’t even know where yours lie.’ 

He Tian smiles. He’s better at this than Guan Shan and only says, ‘You should eat.’

‘I can’t.’ Guan Shan turns away. ‘I feel sick.’ 

///

The afternoon grows cool; night still comes early in Jinan. They enjoy the placitude of the garden for a little while longer before retreating inside the main house, and He Tian leads the way to the dark, shadowed walls of his workshop. 

‘I want to show you something,’ he says, and Guan Shan follows.

Glass vials and books line the walls, wearing the aged marks of a hundred years or more, and a desk He Tian has inherited from some long-dead Zhou ancestor has been shoved into a corner. 

There are no windows in here. The sole oil lamp on the lacquered desk holds the room’s small pocket of amber light. It sheds everything else in shadows, including the long wooden table that lies in the middle of the room—and, beneath it, the prone shape of a body. 

Guan Shan spares it a glance. 

‘Another one?’ he asks. ‘I thought you gave up after the fourth try.’

He Tian shrugs, closing the door shut behind him. He moves through the room, close enough that Guan Shan feels the whisper of his _beizi_ sleeve brush by. The darkness and closed door renders him inescapable. Guan Shan finds, always, that his heart thuds a little faster in his chest when he’s in this room. There is an energy in it so disparate to the springs, which lull him into serenity and where he cannot touch the bottom. 

Here, He Tian’s workshop is charged like the hot air before a storm; he’s conscious of every wall. Guan Shan’s clothes feel too heavy; his throat constricts, and breathing in is like inhaling a cloud of smoke. He’s already sweating.

‘There’s always something I did wrong,’ He Tian murmurs, mostly to himself. He sweeps around to the far side of the table, gazing down on the hidden figure with a small furrow between his brow. His hands drift along the dark fabric covering. Outside of this room, Guan Shan has never seen him so focussed. 

‘Your father still doesn’t know,’ Guan Shan guesses, not quite a question. 

He Tian glances at him. Pointedly, he says, ‘I wouldn’t be working on a fifth if he did.’

‘Any luck?’

‘Some. I’ll know soon. I get a little further each time.’

Guan Shan knows He Tian has brought him in here as a distraction. Inside the workshop, Jinan does not exist beyond. There is no _siheyuan_ , no marketplace, no sprawling estate belonging to the general. There is no war with the Song or the Mongols, and Guan Shan will lead no siege of Lin'an in the coming days to satisfy the Mongol _khatun_. Instead, there is He Tian and the table and the figure lying between them. 

_Science,_ He Tian calls it. Guan Shan knows there are other words for it—insidious and full of spite. 

_Witchcraft, heresy, hubris_. 

He hasn’t decided which he believes. 

He nods to He Tian, whose hands bunch around the edge of the cloth. ‘Go on, then.’

He Tian pulls the cloth back. 

The curiosity is morbid and helpless. A breath catches in Guan Shan’s throat; it’s an effort to clear it. He finds himself leaning forwards slightly, a foot shifting forward. A spot of revulsion holds him back.

On the table, the figure is lifeless and lifelike, but Guan Shan knows there is nothing human about it. A heart does not beat beneath its chest; there’s no tremor of skin with each pulsing beat. Its eyelashes don’t twitch in slumber. It doesn’t breathe, or talk. It has no soul. How can it?

Guan Shan wets his lips. ‘It looks…’

‘Better than the last, doesn’t it?’ He Tian asks, a little breathlessly. There is a dark gleam in his eyes. It makes Guan Shan uncomfortable; mostly, it pulls him in.

He considers the doll, smooth-skinned and sexless, the delicate line of its clavicles. If Guan Shan touches it, will it break? Will it be cold to the touch or hold the warmth of the living? He keeps his hands behind his back. There is a strange, nameless familiarity about it that he can’t put his finger on. It gnaws at him. 

‘This might be the one,’ says He Tian. He crouches down, eyes level with the table. They flick upwards, to Guan Shan, and the intensity in them jolts him. ‘A painless, non-sentient human that could live forever. I could examine every part of it. Replicate illnesses in its body until I find the cures for every virus—every disease, Mo Guan Shan.’

‘You’d need fifty lifetimes,’ Guan Shan mutters.

‘Or fifty dolls.’

Guan Shan folds his arms. ‘That’s fifty soldiers you could have,’ he points out.

‘Why, Little Mo,’ says He Tian, snide. ‘You sound just like my father.’

Guan Shan glares. From He Tian—from either of them—there’s no greater insult. Guan Shan doesn’t want to, but he reasons: ‘You could end the unrest with just the threat of these—these _things_ on their own. Once we—once the Song sees what kinda weapon you’ve got, they’ll let you have the land. Peacefully. No more fightin’.’

He Tian stands, an eyebrow raised. ‘The _khatun_ offered peace, remember? And the Song don’t want it. You heard my father. There’ll always be fighting.’

Guan Shan snorts. ‘You believe him?’

‘For once, yes.’

_Well, fuck._

‘What?’ asks He Tian, considering Guan Shan’s tortured expression. 

‘Nothin’,’ Guan Shan mutters. ‘Just—’

A knock at the door. 

Guan Shan and He Tian exchange a look. Guan Shan’s hand slips beneath his shirt, where he keeps a small blade fastened tightly against his skin with a leather strap. He Tian steps back slowly to the desk, where he must keep his. His eyes are narrowed. 

‘Who is it?’ he calls out, a hand wrapped around the handle of a desk drawer.

‘He Tian!’ comes the muffled call through the door. ‘You in there? It’s Jian Yi!’

He Tian’s hand falls away from the desk. He sighs, glancing heavenwards for a moment. He moves past Guan Shan to open the door, and Jian Yi and Zhengxi pile in without welcome, taking ownership of the room.

 _‘Wā!’_ Jian Yi cries, whistling. Guan Shan hasn’t seen him in over a year. He remains distractingly feminine wearing his _ruqun_ and long hair, which he has plaited behind his ears in the Mongol style, adopting their customs the longer he remains north. He crowds around the table in the middle of the room, ignorant to the both of them. ‘Look at this one, Xixi!’

‘Discretion, Jian Yi,’ Zhengxi warns, scholarly and grey-toned. He throws an apologetic look at He Tian, who has moved quickly to shut the door behind them and muffle Jian Yi’s cries.

‘You’ve outdone yourself,’ Jian Yi declares to He Tian, by way of apology. ‘It looks like it’ll open its eyes any second!’ 

‘Soon,’ He Tian says, his smile enigmatic, before asking: ‘How goes Karakorum? I didn’t know you were back.’

‘Last night,’ Jian Yi sighs. ‘After the announcement from Töregene. I rode with an envoy bringing the news to your father. I slept away the morning and missed the summoning in the courtyard. Whoops.’

‘Easy for some,’ Guan Shan muttered. He thinks Jian Yi looks well—no longer the sickly child Guan Shan knew him as, sent north by General Jian to the Mongols, teaching and accompanying their young heirs and future rulers of empires. Last Guan Shan heard, Jian Yi was the companion of Genghis Khan’s great-grandson, barely ten years old—weak in the lungs but already set to be the Mongol’s Secretariat. Perhaps even a _khan_ if he will live long enough.

Jian Yi’s smile is smug. ‘Mo Guan Shan,’ he says, with the slightest bow. ‘Still hurts to crack a smile, doesn’t it?’

He Tian coughs, hiding his laughter poorly. Humoured, he asks, ‘The young Mongol heirwon’t be missing his lessons with you here?’

Jian Yi pulls a face. ‘He has enough teachers around him to keep busy.’ With chagrin, he adds, ‘To be perfectly honest with you—’

‘How rare.’

‘—I’m not sure that Dorji will make it to _khan_.’

Guan Shan frowns. ‘I heard Kublai was gonna succeed. Dorji’s his son. Wouldn’t he follow?’

Jian Yi spreads his hands. ‘Kublai has other children—healthier children. Who even knows if _Kublai_ will make it to _khan_. Töregene might have killed him by tomorrow. They’re a vicious lot.’

‘Vicious,’ He Tian muses. ‘My father has made his friends with the right people.’

Jian Yi makes a contemplative sound and says, ‘I wouldn’t count on the friendship part.’

At this, the conversation lulls into silence. 

Their parents had all received the first warning from the Jin when they brought the Jurchen people to their knees: _If you ally with the Mongols, they will soon become your enemies._

The Jin had seen it; they were right. 

But their parents had been smarter: they didn’t become the Mongol’s allies. They became Mongols. Tigers in wolves’ clothing. 

‘Speaking of your father,’ Zhengxi interjected. ‘I wanted to speak with you, He Tian—about the orders he gave.’ His gaze flicks once to Guan Shan, and then away. ‘I’d like an account for the annals.’

‘The annals,’ He Tian sighs. ‘You and your writings, Zhan Zhengxi. If you wait until this evening, you’ll have a full account of what was said from every market vendor in the city.’

‘I don’t want gossip,’ Zhengxi replies. ‘I want truth.’

He Tian grins. ‘Ah, yes. _Primary sources.’_

There are no more objections; He Tian begins to lead the way out of the workshop—gaze hesistatiny briefly on the doll, and then on Guan Shan—and to the office he shares with his brother, where Zhengxi can set down his parchment and scribble with ink and brush to his heart’s content. He Tian will set the stage well, remember every detail, every word and glance exchanged from this morning. If asked for his opinion, Guan Shan would remember only the hot air rushing through his ears. Probably for the best, he thinks, that Zhengxi barely spares him his consideration.

They leave him alone with Jian Yi, who is glancing between Guan Shan and the doll with a bemused look. 

‘What?’ Guan Shan snaps.

‘Nothing,’ says Jian Yi. He rocks back on his heels. ‘Tell me—have you asked him why he’s made a doll in your image?’

Guan Shan recoils. ‘Looks nothin’ like me.’

‘It could be your twin.’

_‘Shut up.’_

Jian Yi puts his hands in the pockets of his trousers beneath his _ruqun._ Guan Shan wants to strike the smug, knowing look from his face. He keeps his distance. Between them, the doll lies placid and inescapable. Guan Shan’s gaze falls to it helplessly. 

He grimaces. 

He can’t deny it.

Of course—how had he not seen it sooner? Its stillness had deluded him into blindness, a strange trick of the light. 

He registers every detail now: its auburn hair, a thick fringe of copper lashes, pale skin brushed with freckles, a perpetual furrow at his brow, and a softness at the edge of its unsmiling mouth. A few years younger, perhaps, just escaping teenhood, but Jian Yi is right: they could be twins. 

‘Shit,’ he mutters. 

‘Strange, isn’t it?’ Jian Yi puts his hands on the edge of the table and leans his weight onto them, crowding in close enough that his eyelashes are only a handspan from the doll’s cheeks. ‘He must have watched you pretty closely to craft this from memory…’ 

Guan Shan cringes. The thought makes his chest feel strange and tight. Jian Yi is close enough to the doll—to the doll _wearing his face—_ that he has to resist the urge to shout. _Get away from it._ The way Jian Yi is looking at it with fascinating scrutiny fills him with embarrassment. His face has grown hot. He wants to pull the cloth back over it, hide it from view. 

And then Jian Yi pulls back with a small, satisfied nod. He drapes the cloth over its body, the hapless shape of it covered, pale skin no longer exposed. The table becomes a small, dark island between them. 

Guan Shan lets out a slow breath. ‘How are things in the north?’ he asks, trying for one of He Tian’s tactics. 

Miraculously, it works. 

Jian Yi is content to let the elephant in the room stay covered beneath its sheet. 

‘Cold,’ says Jian Yi, with a slight pout. ‘There’s word that they plan to move their _ordo_ south once this is over—even to Yanjing.’

 _This,_ Guan Shan thinks, ruminating on Jian Yi’s words. _What’s ‘this’? We’re so far away from it we don’t even know what it fucking is._ He pauses. _We’ll all know in two weeks._

‘That’s less than three hundred miles away from here,’ he says to Jian Yi. 

Jian Yi nods. ‘Kublai was born there. He’s… very interested in our culture. He wants to be closer.’

‘Maybe he and General He can switch places.’

Jian Yi grins. ‘Suggest it,’ he says. ‘I’m sure General He wouldn’t mind and neither would I. Xixi’s here.’

‘Maybe Zhengxi should go with you when you go back up,’ Guan Shan grunts. ‘It’s gotta be a a lot more interestin’ writin’ records for the winners.’

‘That’s exactly why he stays here,’ Jian Yi replies after a moment. His eyes tighten. ‘You should be careful, Red. Someone listening might think you’re not happy with your success. The _tümen_ is doing well.’

 _You owe it to the Mongols,_ Jian Yi is saying. _You owe it to General He. We all do. Be grateful._

Guan Shan knows that Jian Yi is astute when he wants to be, and he doesn’t like him for it. He knows there is a smart, quick mind beneath Jian Yi’s bright and dewy exterior, like sunlight catching on a sheet of ice. Guan Shan needs to watch himself: one day, he’ll forget that. If anyone could decide Guan Shan’s life in a heartbeat, it would be Jian Yi’s father, more powerful even than He Tian’s.

‘I’m careful, _bei_ ,’ Guan Shan says. 

‘They could have your head for it.’

Guan Shan shakes his head. _Too late,_ he thinks. _They’ve already got it._

///

The following night, Guan Shan lays out his plans in He Tian’s study with an audience of one.

‘We’ll have a third wave after fifteen minutes—allow the first two infantries to make their mark and get a third to follow to round up the women and children and end any struggles. You and General Qiu can seek out the chancellor.’

‘A public death for the chancellor?’

Guan Shan hesitates. ‘I—’

‘Because that’s what you’ll need. A public execution. Witnesses.’ He Tian comes forward to the desk where Guan Shan has laid out his plans. ‘And escapees to tell the tale—that’s how the Mongols will want it.’ He Tian jabs a finger into the map. ‘You want to use gunpowder here?’

‘You don’t agree?’

‘There must be ten thousand people living in this neighbourhood. The whole city will go up in flames. You’ll kill the whole _tümen_.’

Guan Shan grimaces and rubs at his eyes with the heels of his palms. He’s tired. They’ve been at this all night and He Tian shows no signs of stopping. Guan Shan tries to be grateful for it: he knows he can’t afford to have this be any less than perfect.

‘I don’t know the city,’ Guan Shan says.

‘And my father’s counting on it. You need to do better.’

‘How can I?’ Guan Shan snaps. ‘I don’t know anything.’

‘Why are you even using gunpowder? You’ll have the advantage of surprise and ten thousand men attacking at night.’

‘We’re fighting for the Mongols—it’s not their battle if we’re not using gunpowder or fire arrows or—or bombs or whatever the fuck else they use.’

‘What _we_ use,’ He Tian adds curtly. 

Guan Shan makes a sound of disgust. ‘We. They. I don’t give a fuck.’

‘You need to.’

‘Because you care so fuckin’ much?’

Guan Shan moves as if to leave the room. He Tian’s hand shoots out to grab him on the arm, just shy of hurting. He squeezes tight.

Guan Shan turns on him. _‘Ya—’_

 _‘Be quiet.’_ He Tian’s face is inches from his own and his breath is hot on Guan Shan’s skin when he speaks. ‘I _care_ about you killing ten thousand people, Mo Guan Shan.’ After a moment, He Tian sneers. ‘But I _appreciate_ you making me into an apathetic monster.’

Guan Shan tries to pull away but the grip on his arm is immovable. He Tian could break it if he wanted to. He could do it cleanly—or not.

‘You’re sendin’ me to kill more anyway,’ Guan Shan says quietly. ‘This isn’t a take-over. It’s a massacre. Death sends the right message, right? And I’m the reaper.’

‘Save me the spiel. You could run.’

Guan Shan’s face twists. ‘Don’t act like I’ve got a choice in this—I _never_ had a fuckin’ choice.’

‘You always have a choice,’ says He Tian, his smile insincere and unkind. ‘Just like you’ve got a choice to fuck this up with your own idiocy.’ 

‘And do _what!’_ Guan Shan snaps at him. ‘Get branded a traitor and locked up like my father? Yours makes all the fuckin’ rules around here!’

‘Did you not _think_ to even ask me for my help?’ He Tian demands, nostrils flaring. His grip is bruising. ‘I’m the one person that could help you!’

‘I fuckin’ asked for it! That’s why I’m _here!’_

‘Then why is so hard for you to fucking _listen to me_ when I tell you that you need something _better—’_

‘Because all you do is remind me what a fuck-up I am without actually _helpin’ me—’_

‘Like you make anything _easy,_ Mo Guan Shan—’

 _Enough,_ Guan Shan thinks.

Guan Shan yanks his arm free—and this time He Tian lets him. Temper flared to boiling, Guan Shan swings. The punch doesn’t go far. His fist smacks painfully into He Tian’s palm and he cries out as He Tian twists it, Guan Shan’s shoulder contorted in its socket. 

He Tian’s other fist lands its mark in Guan Shan’s side. Pain explodes beneath his ribcage and Guan Shan goes to his knees, winded. He Tian follows him down. He doesn’t hold up—the second hit follows shortly after, sharp knuckles catching Guan Shan on the side of his head until he sees stars. The room swims before his eyes like distorting ink blots, contracting and expanding like the flame of a candle. He spits blood onto the floor. 

‘Enough!’ he shouts, hands out before him. His elbow smashes into the edge of He Tian’s jaw, his knee cap thudding into He Tian’s chest. He Tian grunts, stumbling. His weight collapses into Guan Shan, his hands just barely stopping him from crushing Guan Shan beneath him. 

‘Get off!’ Guan Shan cries, panic building in his throat like acid. There’s nowhere to go. He Tian’s body has his pinned to the floor, his knee pressing hard into Guan Shan’s abdomen, his hands pinning Guan Shan’s wrists to the floorboards above him. He twists on the floor like a gutted fish on the deck of a ship, and his eyes are wide and streaming. He Tian is looking down at him with a dogged determination that makes Guan Shan feel sick. 

This doesn’t feel like a game anymore; this isn’t one of their tussles during training. They aren’t _boys._ He Tian could put his hands around Guan Shan’s throat and press down for as long as he wanted. Until Guan Shan’s face went purplish and his larynx was crushed beneath the weight. It would be an inconvenience that they’d lose tomorrow’s commander; it would be no great shame. 

General He might even thank his son.

But He Tian does none of that. The pressure on Guan Shan’s abdomen lightens; He Tian’s hold around Guan Shan’s wrists is loose. Guan Shan could fight his way free now, if he wanted. He stays put, breathing heavy. He Tian’s gaze is enough to pin him in place. For a startled moment, Guan Shan thinks He Tian might kiss him. Worse: he doesn’t know what he’ll do if He Tian does. 

In the end, He Tian only shakes his head. ‘You don’t _understand_ ,’ he mutters. Defeatism weighs on him like a burial shroud. 

‘You think I don’t know what I’m doin’,’ Guan Shan says, his voice rough and strained. His eyes fixate on the ornate ceiling of He Tian’s study. ‘I get it. I don’t know what I’m doin’ and I’m gonna kill everyone for it. I’m—fuck, I’m gonna give the general what he wants.’

‘No,’ says He Tian. ‘Mo Guan Shan.’ 

He Tian bows his head, the crown of it pressed to Guan Shan’s chest like a penitent. Guan Shan can’t move. He Tian must hear the staccato thumping of his heart like a battle drum. What war is his body calling him to? Why was he born with belligerence in his blood?

Guan Shan yields to the softness in He Tian’s voice.

‘I don’t care,’ says He Tian. ‘I do not _care_ if ten thousand men die in Lin’an.’ His words are muffled, and Guan Shan can feel He Tian’s hot, heavy breath on his shirt. ‘You’re a fool, Mo Guan Shan. I couldn’t bear it if I lost you.’

The study is silent. 

Guan Shan considers the carved, lacquered trim of the cherry wood ceiling. He cannot consider anything else. He cannot move. 

Eventually, silently, He Tian stands. Guan Shan senses him moving over to the corner of the room and stopping before one of the tapestries hanging from the wall. He says nothing else. 

‘I should have been more obvious,’ He Tian murmurs. ‘I wanted to. But not without putting you at risk.’

Slowly, Guan Shan sits up. ‘How long?’

He Tian glances at him, then looks away. ‘Since what?’

‘How long have you…’ 

He Tian’s eyes tighten at the corners. ‘We’ve known each other since we were children.’

Guan Shan presses a hand to his chest. It isn’t an answer; He Tian is shadowed and unforgiving in the corner of the room. From a certain angle, he looks more like his father than Guan Shan would like to see. Guan Shan shakes his head. 

‘I should go,’ he says, getting to his feet. The tension in the room has snapped, leaving Guan Shan feeling tired and exhausted like adrenaline abating after a long parry. He makes it to the door before He Tian calls his name, and Guan Shan keeps his eyes on the floor. ‘Your father wants a briefing of the strategy,’ he tells He Tian. ‘We leave at sunrise.’

‘I know,’ He Tian says. He gestures to the desk. ‘If you give me five minutes, you’ll give him something better.’

///

General He assesses him in the weak moonlight of the courtyard. It’s close to freezing tonight, their breath clouding the flagstone enclosure. Two staff members stand a little way off, shivering. The large oil lamps they carry waver in the air, throwing strange shadows onto the ground. Guan Shan has not been permitted inside the house.

‘And this was your doing?’ the general asks, considering the scroll of parchment in his hands, just visible in the light. ‘You assembled this yourself?’

Guan Shan doesn’t look behind him to where He Tian is a firm, silent presence at his back. Instead, he nods. 

‘I did, sir.’

General He grunts. ‘You have a contingency?’

‘Yes, sir.’

General He considers him shrewdly. ‘General Qiu will need to be briefed.’

‘I’ve sent a messenger, sir,’ Guan Shan replies. ‘They should get there a few days before the cohort arrives. We’ll join forces in ten days from tomorrow.’

The general begins to roll up the parchment. ‘Very well.’ 

Guan Shan sucks in a breath of air, cold enough that it makes his teeth ache. He shifts his weight on his feet. A thin layer of frost has settled on the damp stone; it creaks beneath his boots. When the general makes no further comment, Guan Shan asks: ‘Is that all, sir?’

The general is ruminating, and Guan Shan can see the slight line between his heavy brows. The strategy Guan Shan has presented to him is faultless; Guan Shan knew it the moment He Tian laid it out to him. The outcome is almost guaranteed. Guan Shan will win and General He will hate him even more for it.

The general glances at him, his hesitation lasting only a moment. ‘Pardon me?’ he asks astringently.

‘Have you—Do you have any objections? Sir?’

The general tucks the roll of parchment under an armpit and clasps his large hands behind his back. His eyes have fallen past Guan Shan to rest on his son. Guan Shan doesn’t look behind him; he doesn’t want to see what sort of exchange is taking place in the midnight darkness of the courtyard. 

He resists the strange, unwarranted urge to step back until his back is flush against He Tian’s chest. He keeps his eyes trained ahead, waiting for the moment to pass. 

Eventually, the general looks at him again and says, ‘No, officer. No objections.’ And then he smiles. ‘None at all.’

///

They walk back to He Tian’s _siheyuan_ under a clouded sky. Guan Shan can feel a thrum under his veins like he’s coming down from an adrenaline high, as if the general were a dragon and Guan Shan is now sheathing his bloodied sword. 

‘He didn’t like it,’ he says as they walk. 

‘I know.’

‘What d’you think it means?’

He Tian is frowning. ‘That he’ll have to stomach your success.’

‘He could change the outcome. Pit the _tümen_ against me.’

He Tian shakes his head. ‘He’s staying here. His reach will be limited after two weeks.’

Guan Shan looks at him. ‘You can’t seriously expect me to believe that.’

‘Which part?’

‘He Tian.’

Briefly, they stop. 

‘Your father’s a tyrant,’ Guan Shan tells him, knowing logically that the winner’s high he feels is a false one, some kind of placebo. ‘He’s a spider. Any strategy’s got a flaw in it if that’s what he wants—even one of yours.’

He Tian snorts. ‘I’ll be with you,’ he says. ‘I won’t let anything happen to you.’

The night is cold, but heat colours Guan Shan’s cheeks. He drops his gaze. 

‘You shouldn’t say stuff like that.’

‘Why? It’s the truth.’

Guan Shan shakes his head and they continue walking. They pass two guards patrolling the streets, and Guan Shan lingers outside the wall of He Tian’s estate. 

From within the walls of a nearby home, he can hear the strings of an erhu being played by a sleepless musician, some early signal before half the city leaves in the morning. _A victory song,_ Guan Shan thinks, _or_ _a dirge?_

He Tian has lit a pipe with a box of matches from his pocket. Smoke blooms around him.

‘I’ll see you in the mornin’,’ Guan Shan tells him. He doesn’t know why he adds this: ‘Enjoy the last night with your doll.’

He Tian snorts again. ‘What are you talking about? You’re not seriously going home, are you?’

_Where else would I go?_

‘It’s late. I wanna get an hour’s sleep before we move out.’

‘You’re not going to sleep at all.’

Guan Shan considers him. ‘You seem pretty fuckin’ certain of that.’

‘I am.’

He Tian has taken a few steps forward. They’re on the eve of a two-week campaign neither of them might return from, and He Tian’s gaze is heavy. Guan Shan is pulled to it. In a day—fuck, not even that—he has gone from hating He Tian to aching at the thought of being fucked by him. He wonders if that hasn’t always been the case. 

‘I’m sure,’ says He Tian, voice soft as night, ‘because I expect you to spend the night in my bed.’

Guan Shan balks at the candidness. ‘You can’t be serious.’

He Tian lifts a singular dark brow. There is smoke all around them, like fog. Guan Shan breathes it in. 

He Tian says, ‘Deadly.’

///

Guan Shan doesn’t sleep that night. He yields to a grey-skied dawn when it comes, and loud, melodic birdsong that approaches before the dawn. There will be no spring visit this morning. Instead, he fastens his travelling clothing tight and evades the arm that He Tian extends from his bed pallet, built to ensnare. The sheets pool to his abdomen; his strong chest is laid bare.

‘There’s no time,’ Guan Shan says. He drinks the tea that has been left on a tray outside the door, still hot and burning his throat. ‘They’ll be waiting.’

‘Let Lu Gao handle it.’

 _Lu Gao_. Guan Shan grimaces. How is he going to explain this to him? His grey-haired friend will hate him for it, if only for a few days. At least until he grows used to the sight of He Tian leaving Guan Shan’s tent in the mornings.

Now, Guan Shan looks at He Tian, who’s still considering him leisurely from the bed. He Tian’s gaze is heavy-lidded and wanting; the base of Guan Shan’s stomach twists not unpleasantly. He holds himself steady. 

‘He Tian—’

‘Ah-Shan,’ says He Tian. He has a hand held out. ‘There’s always time.’

///

The day is a cold one, the skies thick with cloud and fog, and Guan Shan is sweating as he stands outside the ramparts of Jinan and looks down the slope towards the army. His army. Seven thousand men are waiting to hear his words, ready to follow him for two weeks into their old lands and kill their own people. Guan Shan can’t remind them of any of that. He wears the heavy lying crown of a traitor and puts fierce, mislaid pride in his voice. _At least it’ll be warmer down south,_ he jokes with a few of them while they gather. The men laugh. 

He hopes now when he addresses them that they’ll mistake the fear in his voice for chill, that the tremor doesn’t carry through the crowds. He hopes it’s enough that General He has approved the plan and they trust the general’s approval enough to believe he wouldn’t sacrifice ten thousand men for the failure of one. 

Guan Shan knows he would. 

Through the fog he can see the dull glint of brocades and the parade tacks for the cavalry, the buckles on leather fastenings and chest mouldings. The first few hundred soldiers are visible; the latter are lost to the fog with the wagons carrying ammunition and provisions, which Guan Shan was not surprised to find were already prepared. General He has been waiting for the command from Töregene for months. 

Guan Shan looks out before him: a sea of faces he doesn’t recognise; a few he does. The general isn’t here to see them off, and Guan Shan isn’t bothered by the snub. It makes his task easier. In the distance, there are a handful of counterweight trebuchets, newly engineered and standing like monoliths through the copse of clouded air: they will be dragged the distance south, or taken apart and set on the backs of carts before being rebuilt outside the walls of Lin’an. 

Guan Shan considers them, remembers his grandfather’s stories of lime and sulphur being hurled from ships against the Jin decades before. 

‘Don’t be scared.’

Guan Shan turns to He Tian, who sits astride his horse slightly behind him with the rest of the commanding officers as they wait for the last of the infantry to gather.

‘I’m not,’ he says. ‘I’m fuckin’ terrified.’ 

He Tian chuckles, a warm sound. ‘Here,’ he says. He reaches up to where his hair is tied with his _jin,_ and gently unbinds it. ‘We should trade.’

Guan Shan stares at him. ‘There’s an _audience_.’

‘You weren’t this shy last night.’ 

_‘Be quiet_ ,’ Guan Shan hisses.

‘You weren’t that, either.’

Guan Shan snatches the hairpiece from He Tian’s hand, then yanks his own from his hair and smacks it into He Tian’s still-open palm. It takes a minute to fix it into place, and Guan Shan can feel the weight of many gazes upon the both of them. 

‘There,’ he grumbles. He can feel his cheeks flaring hotly. ‘Happy?’

He Tian is smiling. His eyes flicker to the hairpiece Guan Shan now wears. ‘I’m content,’ he says. ‘Now you have a token.’

‘Of what?’

‘Luck. Affection.’ He adds, ‘You look pretty.’

 _‘Tsch_. _’_ Guan Shan tightens his hands around his horse’s reins. ‘I’m not—Men can’t be fuckin’ _pretty.’_

‘A shame.’

Guan Shan wrinkles his nose. ‘You know it’s gonna take more than a hairpiece to keep me alive at the end of all this.’

‘I know,’ says He Tian, unusually cheerful. ‘That’s why I don’t intend to leave your side.’

Before Guan Shan can reply, he catches sight of Lu Gao steering his horse up the slight incline towards them and stopping at a short distance behind him. 

‘They’re ready, Guan Shan,’ Lu Gao says, throwing He Tian a strange look. ‘All units are assembled.’

Guan Shan nods in thanks. When he turns towards the army before him, the land goes quiet. There is early birdsong, and the rustle of leaves as weeping willows undulate with the cold breeze. Through the fog, their long catkins are like the lithe arms of a dancer under cover of night. Guan Shan sets his gaze on the Taishan Mountain to the south. 

He begins to speak.

///

‘General Qiu’s unit is through the gates, sir. The ground work is complete.’

‘And the ramparts?’

‘Three-quarters occupied by us. In an hour, we’ll have the whole wall. They’re beyond defence.’

Guan Shan turns away from the officer and to He Tian. ‘Is it time?’

‘As good as any.’

Guan Shan looks grimly at the walled city. It’s bigger than he could have imagined. How have they taken this? He thinks of their ten thousand men, most of them still at his back awaiting his command, and looks at the trebuchets swinging like pendulums. He thinks of the strategy He Tian put in his hands like a gift. 

‘You should be doin’ this,’ Guan Shan says. ‘You should be leadin’.’

‘You are,’ says He Tian. ‘No time for looking back now.’ He grabs Guan Shan by the arm. ‘I mean it, Mo Guan Shan. Do not look back.’ He leans in close, and his breath is hot. Meeting his gaze is almost painfully intense. ‘I have you.’

Guan Shan lets out a shallow breath. He glances at the officer awaiting his command, and gives a single nod. 

‘We ride.’

///

He Tian’s strategy goes to plan, as Guan Shan knew it would. They have the city in less than four hours, and dawn will be approaching soon. The troops were well-rested despite a two-week traverse from the north; Lu Gao and He Tian oversaw their care, and there was good camaraderie between theirs and General Qiu’s troops for the last leg of the campaign to Lin’an. The Song’s capital city was aware of their arrival—and waiting. 

They made good use of their cannons and archers from the watchtowers of the city, but Guan Shan’s men were well-prepared for the first wave of retaliation and lost only a small handful of their men. It took less than an hour to break through the city ramparts with the trebuchets swinging like pendulums, and by midnight their cavalry rode through the open gates and across the bridges that laced the waters of the Grand Canal. Here, the Han’s ships are useless: they can’t throw ammunition from the port without setting the whole city aflame and bringing their people down with it. He Tian had been right. 

Guan Shan watches his victory unfold from a conquered watchtower, one of hundreds in the city that now hang with the Mongol’s black banner. He can see his men dragging prisoners through the streets, and flames dance through the windows of shops and houses, stacked on top of each other like pebbles on a beach, too close. His men are good: it takes less than ten minutes for them to put the fires out. They don’t want the city to burn; they want it ready for occupation. 

The chancellor’s execution has already been exacted—payment for the Mongol, Yisü, the messenger whose gift of peace was rewarded with blood.

Below Guan Shan, He Tian is barking orders to a band of soldiers who have two women stripped to their waists, parading them through their city, and Guan Shan looks away. He’s grateful when he hears the screams, the ringing of steel. Two bodies slumping to the floor. 

_Better for them,_ Guan Shan thinks. 

As if he can hear him, He Tian stops and looks up. The soldiers leave, chastised. Somehow, He Tian can still smile. Guan Shan lifts a hand. 

_Come here,_ Guan Shan thinks. _Stand here with me._

He Tian is mouthing something at him, but Guan Shan can’t make it out. He gestures towards the long, towering staircase below, but He Tian is only staring. 

‘What’s your problem?’ Guan Shan murmurs. He turns, as if to make his own way down. He stops. The watchtower is small, only room enough for a couple of men to stand. Above, a large bell hangs for the watchmen to signal fire—or war. 

Over the din of bells ringing and glass smashing and women screaming, Guan Shan hadn’t heard the three men climb the tower. 

They are dressed in peasant’s clothing, as if they’re men from the city, but Guan Shan knows they’re not. One has a sword, the other two a knife. Three of General He’s men. Three men Guan Shan has overseen and cared for on the two week journey from Jinan. He has made sure they’ve been fed and that their armour is suitable enough to keep them alive with a little skill. He regrets it now. He should’ve listened to He Tian—he should’ve run. 

‘Don’t do this,’ Guan Shan warns them. ‘You don’t have to do this.’

One of the men grimaces, but it isn’t enough. They approach.

‘Please.’

The same man shakes his head. ‘Haven’t got a choice, Mo Guan Shan.’

Guan Shan feels wet on his cheeks when he says, ‘You always have a choice.’

‘We’ll make it quick. They’ll honour you.’

‘No, I—’

There’s a struggle, a flurry of swords and awkward strikes. They crowd in close, and it’s too late. The blade strikes in, upward. The pain is agonising. Guan Shan goes down, sucking air through his teeth. He’s burning, white-hot, and he stares down at himself. There’s no hilt left in place, nothing to stave off the bleeding; his blood spills out over his hands in a torrent. 

When he looks up, three bodies have crumpled to the floor, throats slit with suicide. Guan Shan is thinking about how he can’t imagine what General He must have promised them, when He Tian’s head appears over the staired entry to the tower. 

He’s breathing hard, and his dark eyes brighten when he sees Guan Shan’s returning gaze. _Still alive,_ he’s thinking. A rush of emotion sweeps Guan Shan so violently that he sobs. Pity. Remorse. The pain makes him cry harder. 

He Tian is stumbling over the bodies to get to him, pawing at his armour, the cloth now blood-soaked and stained. There’ll be no getting it out. What the fuck does he own that they can bury him in?

‘Told you,’ Guan Shan mumbles, the words garbled.

‘I left you,’ He Tian is gasping. His face has gone white as ash. Is he injured, too? ‘I said I’d stay—’

‘Right by my side,’ Guan Shan finishes for him. He sweeps a hand across the side of He Tian’s face. He’s trying for tenderness, for comfort, but his arm feels too heavy and disconnected, and the gesture leaves a streak of blood in He Tian’s hair and across his skin like battle paint. He sighs at himself. ‘Doesn’t matter. You’re right here.’

‘Gods, _Guan Shan—’_

‘Don’t,’ Guan Shan tells him. He winces, tries to sit up more fully, collapses back down with a groan. ‘You did—the best you could.’

‘It wasn’t good enough.’

‘Neither was mine.’

He Tian’s hand goes to the back of Guan Shan’s skull. Guan Shan realises his head was lolling, and he forces his eyes into focus. He spies the _jin_ hairpiece at He Tian’s crown. 

‘Pretty,’ he mumbles. 

He Tian’s laughter is a choked thing. ‘Looks better on you.’

Guan Shan finds that hard to believe, and says so.

‘Take the fucking compliment, Guan Shan,’ He Tian begs. His hand is tight enough in Guan Shan’s hair that it hurts. Guan Shan hangs a hand off He Tian’s wrist, and the pressure eases. 

‘Kiss me,’ he tells him.

‘Guan Shan, there’s a lot of blood.’

 _‘Kiss me._ Like—like you wanted to in the study.’

He Tian’s sob is anguished. His head hangs heavy. ‘You’re a fool, Mo Guan Shan.’

But he obeys.

The kiss is a firm, trembling thing. It’s unbearable. Guan Shan can feel He Tian’s wet cheek pressing against his own, and he kisses hard enough that he’s close to biting. Guan Shan would like it to bruise; he thinks about carrying the mark of it with him, something that will last for a little while. 

They’re both covered in his blood, and he smells it, coppery and hot, when He Tian presses two red-slick hands to either side of Guan Shan’s face and refuses to let go. They break, just for a second, and Guan Shan says, ‘Don’t stop,’ because that’s how it would have been in the study. The awful realisation that they’d wasted more than twenty years of their life not doing this when they could have. 

_Don’t stop,_ he thinks. 

He’s fading. 

Distantly, he thinks he hears a shout. There’s someone else on the watchtower, gone to their knees. Lu Gao, his grey-haired friend? General Qiu?

He Tian doesn’t stop, and Guan Shan can feel the cry building in his throat. It makes his lips hum. He Tian presses harder until Guan Shan starts to feel his mouth go slack and all feeling starts to disappear from his tongue. His kisses grow weak; his answering affection is a poor response. Insufficient. He Tian doesn’t notice. 

The truth makes him close his eyes while this foreign city is under siege around him, while victory promises to be his by dawn: he’s going to die with He Tian’s mouth pressing urgently against his own, trying to make up for all the lost time. The watchtower bells ring out.


	2. Chapter 2

On the surface, nothing changes. 

Indeed, since He Cheng last visited his home in Jinan, there is nothing different about it at all. The _siheyuan_ is as it was, caught between late spring and early summer, the estate on the verge of abundance. He can’t remember when he last passed its threshold. Four years, perhaps? Maybe more. 

A serving girl bows to him at the gated entrance, stumbling backwards. He sees no one else until he crosses the courtyard and takes note of the koi swimming happily in the pond. An elderly man wearing a wide-brimmed hat crouches at the water’s edge, tossing dried worms into the pond before they’re snatched by small gasping mouths. 

‘Where is my brother?’ asks He Cheng. 

It’s a warm, dry day. The shadows on the ground are long. The man squints up at him. He drops the bag of worms. 

‘General He,’ he sputters. He keeps his head lowered. ‘W-we weren’t expecting you so soon.’

He Cheng waits.

‘F-forgive me, General. This old servant doesn’t know where Commander He is. I-I haven’t seen him leave the estate today.’

He Cheng frowns, and looks to the main house.

‘Very well,’ he says. ‘I’ll seek him out.’

The old man raises his eyes carefully. He spots the pack horse standing idly past the gates of the estate. He gestures with a frail hand, the skin pockmarked by sun and age. There is a dark bruise at his wrist. 

‘Can this old man help you with your things, sir?’

He Cheng’s lips press together. ‘No, save your strength, Uncle. I’ll fetch them after.’

He leaves the man by the pond and wanders along the portico and into the main house. Like the gardens, it is quiet inside. There is a strange silence that makes He Cheng overtly aware of his own breath, as if winter has settled months early. 

_No birdsong,_ he thinks.

He makes his way down familiar hallways, ducking his head into familiar rooms. Each one empty or occupied by staff who stutter and bow their heads when they meet his gaze. Perhaps he should’ve sent word before, but there has been no time. The funeral ceremony is in the morning.

In the end, he knows where he’ll find his brother. The workshop is hidden within another room like a puzzle, windowless and dark, the closeness of it leaving something cloying on the throat. He Cheng doesn’t know how his brother can stand it; he doesn’t ask. It’s unlocked when he opens it, the door giving way with a slight shove of his shoulder. 

Inside, his brother’s back is to him, bowed over some experiment on the main worktop. He doesn’t turn. 

‘I’m home, brother.’

He Tian’s hands continue working. He Cheng can’t see what he’s doing, but there is a strange, dull scratching sound, like a scalpel moving over clay.

‘He Tian—’

‘I heard you. You’ve wasted a journey.’

He Cheng pauses. He doesn’t reprimand He Tian instantly. Before, He Cheng might have gone forward and struck him over the head for the insolence. But He Tian is not playing a game; there is no impish cheek to his voice. Instead: resentment and colourless apathy. His voice is simply void.

He Cheng’s eyes slide to the bench. He spies a lock of reddish hair, a patch of pale skin. 

_Oh, brother…_

‘I heard the news of Lin’an.’

With dull malice He Tian replies, ‘Our grand victory?’

‘I know Mo Guan Shan was killed.’

‘Commanders rarely die in battle, but he never had much luck.’

‘ _He Tian._ ’

With deliberate slowness, He Tian puts his tools down. He turns. 

His eyes are sunken with shadows, and his lips are cracked and dry as if he has spent too long in the Gobi or the dry plains of Mongolia. For a brief moment, He Cheng doesn’t recognise him—it’s as if some part of him has died on the inside, and his heart hasn’t quite caught up. A delayed onset, each part of him breaking off with fractured slowness. 

What has their father done?

He Cheng stares at his brother. ‘Tian De,’ he says. ‘You shouldn’t speak so ill of the dead.’

A muscle jumps in He Tian’s jaw, and He Cheng’s glad for it. 

‘I stayed with him,’ says He Tian. ‘I oversaw the _shouling_ for his passing _._ I made sure he wasn’t alone. It isn’t me who speaks ill of him.’

‘His funeral is tomorrow,’ He Cheng replies. ‘I’ll come with you.’

He Tian shakes his head. ‘You haven’t returned to be my chaperone, brother.’

‘Chaperone?’

‘My overseer. Did father bring you back to stop me doing something foolish?’

‘Like what?’

He Tian’s look is darkly dry. He Cheng is almost pleased he doesn’t answer, but the unsaid vacuum fills his mind with darkened thoughts and possibilities. Foolish. He knows He Tian had affections for the redheaded boy—knows that, in his own way, He Tian had loved him. He Cheng hadn’t accounted for He Tian’s self-destruction and a grieving process that could ruin him. Perhaps it had run deeper than He Cheng thought possible: not a river but an ocean.

He Cheng says again, ‘I’ll come with you tomorrow.’

‘Do what you must,’ says He Tian.

He Cheng frowns at him, and He Tian returns to his work. He Cheng stares at the curved width of his shoulders and marvels. What happened in Lin’an? He has seen Qiu since the siege, but Qiu had little to say—he hadn’t seen Mo Guan Shan fall. He’d only found him on the watchtower, He Tian seated in a pool of Guan Shan’s blood, Lu Gao gone to his knees by the stairs. 

‘It wasn’t good,’ Qiu had told He Cheng. ‘Your brother—the sounds he made… It was like the falling of a king. I felt for him, He Cheng. In my chest—right here, lay your hand there—I really felt for him.’

He Cheng hesitates where he stands, unsure what to do. Qiu’s words play over in his mind, ricocheting as they had the whole solitary journey from Caizhou. He Tian works as if He Cheng isn’t there. Perhaps, in the shadowed alcoves of He Tian’s mind, that’s exactly the case. He Cheng lets him work, and leaves.

The appetite he’d built up on the road, feasting on slim rations and lukewarm water gone stale in his waterskin, has suddenly left him. He retraces his steps out to the garden. The man tending to the pond has now set himself up beside He Cheng’s horse, stroking her long neck. His packs lie in a neat pile against the entry wall that runs the perimeter of the estate. 

He startles as He Cheng approaches. 

‘I-I know you said to leave them, General,’ he stammers. He has his hand around the reins of He Cheng’s horse. ‘This servant can take her to the stable and have her seen to.’

He Cheng sighs. He shoulders his bags and gives the man a steady look.

‘Very well. But you should be careful, Uncle. I wouldn’t want to see you hurt.’

///

The funeral is a small affair, but their father is in attendance, which means it becomes nothing of the sort. He Cheng stands between the general and He Tian, and makes no remark when their father joins them, causing He Tian to bolt upright as if he’s been scalded. 

‘Good to see you, my virtuous son,’ says the general. ‘I had not known you cared for the boy.’

 _I hardly knew him,_ He Cheng almost says. Instead, he simply nods. He Tian says nothing. He’s startling in a robe of white, and his eyes are flat black stones in their sockets, his gaze ahead. The funeral is at Baotu Spring, by the general’s approval. He Cheng doesn’t know where Mo Guan Shan’s body will be buried by the end of the day.

He lies still in his casket in the centre of the spring’s pavilion. There is no sign of the wounds, and his luminous skin has gone ashen with death. Incense drifts around the casket, whorls of cedarwood smoke caught on the breeze. There are modelled figurines around the casket made of clay and stone, too small for He Cheng to make out. He doesn’t approach the casket; neither does He Tian. 

‘You should bid him farewell,’ he murmurs to his brother, when the Buddhist officiant begins to speak. 

He Tian hardly acknowledges him. ‘I already have.’

‘He Tian—’

‘I’m not in the mood for a lecture on etiquette, older brother,’ snaps He Tian. ‘Don’t start that with me here.’

He Cheng swallows a sigh. ‘Very well.’

Beside him, their father is giving He Tian a long look. ‘Is he being difficult?’

He Tian leans forward. ‘Difficult?’ he says, with deliberate slowness.

He Cheng closes his eyes briefly. ‘Let’s not,’ he says. ‘Not here.’ 

‘Not what, brother? Tread gently around Guan Shan’s murderer?’

 _‘Quiet,’_ He Cheng grunts. ‘His mother is here.’

He Tian draws in an audibly sharp breath. The three He men turn. 

He Cheng cannot remember the woman ever seeming so small. 

He wonders what part of death eats away at those who are still living, a festering parasite that He Cheng has seen pick at his brother and Mo Guan Shan’s mother like maggots eating at the roots of a flower. As is customary, she spares her son’s body a brief glance, and gives him no rites or prayers. Unmarried and childless, his body would not have been welcomed into the family home. She must mourn in muted silence. 

_So must He Tian._

He Cheng turns back, allowing the woman the respect of an unmonitored entrance. As he does so, he notices the young scholar, Zhan Zhengxi, standing off to one side, and the grey-haired soldier, Lu Gao, standing with him. He Cheng presses his lips to a thin line. Lu Gao appears to be crying. There are others in attendance, too: men who fought beneath Guan Shan at Lin’an, others from Jinan who knew him from child to commanding officer, a handful few He Cheng doesn’t know at all. 

Mo Guan Shan’s father is not there. He Cheng wonders if he has even been told that his son is dead. The weight of it, surely, would kill him. Mr Mo’s own indiscretions—his own attempts at resisting Mongol rule and the increasing will of He Cheng’s father after victory against the Jin led the man to his cell. Now, they have led Mo Guan Shan to his death. With abject certainty, He Cheng knows what degree of responsibility his father had in the boy’s death. He does not need to hear the exchange that follows between He Tian and their father:

‘He did this to her,’ says He Tian. He Cheng isn’t sure who he’s talking to, but his voice is unmistakably thick. ‘He did this to Mo Guan Shan.’

Their father gives them both a smile that is sharp and imperious. 

He says, quietly, ‘I didn’t kill the boy, He Tian. You should thank me. I made him a martyr.’

///

The doll stares at him. 

It looks nothing like him, really. It looks nothing fucking like him.

The silence in He Tian’s head presses on him like a bruise that refuses to heal. It’s been like that since Lin’an. The ache of it feels like it will always be that way. He can see his father’s smiling face in the shadowed periphery of the workshop. He wanted to hurt him at the funeral, a well-placed punch without humility or honorifics. What spoils had his father given him from this war but a dead lover? What victory had been won? 

Instead, he had simply left. 

He’d left Guan Shan to be looked at by those who didn’t know him—by his mother, whose family had been stripped from her twice. Shame wells up in He Tian.

He looks into the unblinking russet gaze of the doll, blankly curious. It sits up on the bench and stares back. Its mouth moves, as if it might speak.

His father’s proud face blurs in his vision.

The skin on He Tian’s knuckles splits on the doll’s cheek. 

It takes only a few minutes. No one comes running at the noise of something smashing and breaking into a million fragments. No one comes to check on the sounds that erupt from the four dark walls of the workshop. He Tian’s rage is a silent one. Ceramic crunches beneath his feet. His hands are red and bloodied to ribbons, and they stain his white funeral robes.

He Tian looks around him and, slowly, falls to his knees. He grabs a careful handful of ceramic, a lock of reddish hair. Here, a piece of his forehead. Here, the determined edge of his jawline. He Tian forgets how to breathe. He holds a fragment of its lower lip in his palm. He’d had two weeks to kiss them, no more. They could have had more. They could’ve had decades. 

He Tian can hear the sounds that are coming from him. Animal-like and unconscionable. He falls back on his haunches and chokes through a howl. It _hurts_ , rips itself from him like acid pouring from his throat, all of him burning from the inside out—it’s worse at his chest. He goes to all fours, feels like his heart is going to give out. He can’t breathe. 

What has he done? 

‘What the fuck have I done?’ he whispers.

By tonight, Guan Shan’s body will be in the ground, and He Tian has no replica—accurate or not—with which to imprint onto another of his creations. How long before he forgets the shape of his face? The pigment of his eyes? The quirk between his brows in a moment of frustration or concentration? The parting ‘o’ of his mouth when— 

How will He Tian know he has it perfectly without his lover standing before him? Without his muse.

He’ll try again. He’ll try again and he’ll start now. 

He scrabbles on the floor of his workshop for the pieces, flesh-coloured and fractured. There must be thousands. It’ll take him all night. 

‘I’ll try again,’ he whispers. ‘I’ll start now. I’ll put you back together, I promise. It’ll take all night but I’ll start now. I promise. I have to. I have to or…’ 

_Or I might forget._

///

**Six months later.**

Half of the estate is empty when Zhan Zhengxi arrives, rooms devoid of furniture and the rest covered in dust sheets. He hasn’t visited in some time—only twice since the funeral. He knows General He Cheng is based down south almost permanently now, setting the foundations for a Mongol avance, wrestling with the Song for old capitals—even Lin’an, which had been taken with such ease less than a year ago now. 

There’s a carriage waiting outside the walls when Zhengxi approaches, laden with two wooden trunks and a handful of leather bags. Two carriage horses kick idly into the leaf-strewn ground, their nostrils flaring and puffing out clouds of cold air. Before Zhengxi can peer into the curtained carriage, He Tian approaches from the house. 

He is thinner than Zhengxi can ever recall seeing him, and paler too. His robes hang off his tall frame, which he no longer fills. Zhengxi knows he has stepped down as a commanding officer, that he no longer attends meetings with his father or offers his strategic advice. It’s a spectacle when he leaves the house these days—and now he is leaving for good. 

‘You were going to leave without telling me?’ Zhengxi asks as He Tian steps through the gated archway. At the affront, He Tian doesn’t look embarrassed in the slightest. Instead, he sighs. 

‘It wouldn’t be the last time we saw one another, Zhan Zhengxi,’ he says. With a glimpse of his old spark he adds, ‘Were you going to miss me?’

Zhengxi gives him a steady look. ‘This has become a war city. I’ll be losing a confidante.’ Which is to say: _Yes, you brute._

‘You’ll survive better than most of us,’ He Tian tells him dryly. ‘You’ll have your books.’

‘My books rarely talk back.’

‘A shame,’ He Tian murmurs. He glances strangely towards the carriage at Zhengxi’s back, as if catching someone’s eye. When Zhengxi looks, there is no one there, only the curtained window of the carriage. Odd.

‘Where will you go?’ Zhengxi asks. ‘Caizhou, with your brother?’’

He Tian shakes his head. ‘North to Karakorum,’ he says. ‘Möngke has accepted my request to take up residency in the _ordu_.’

Zhengxi stares at him. ‘You’re going to live with the Mongols.’

‘I’ll send Jian Yi your regards.’ He Tian smiles. ‘Chastely, I promise.’

Zhengxi has no time for games or jest, even if he knows it is the first time in a while He Tian might have bothered to try it. Has he lost his mind? In Jinan, he is only slightly in his father’s pocket. In Karakorum, there will be no hiding from the will of the _khan_. Perhaps it doesn’t matter to him. Perhaps there is no greater enemy than his own blood. 

Zhengxi had listened to the accounts of the watchtower with a shaking hand while he wrote. It was General Qiu who had allowed him his version of the siege for the annals. He Tian had been inconsolable, and in the end, Zhengxi could afford Mo Guan Shan only a line.

_The commanding officer for the siege, Mo Guan Shan, having achieved victory, died honourably during battle._

‘He Tian…’ Zhengxi now ventures. ‘Since when did you have love for the _khanate_? After Lin’an—’

He Tian reaches forward to clasp Zhengxi firmly on the shoulder. He squeezes once. ‘Let’s not dwell on the past, Zhan Zhengxi. What’s done is done.’

Zhengxi considers his old friend with uncertainty as He Tian steps back. He Tian expresses the idiom with none of its usual weary resignation. No, there is anger there. Zhengxi can see how it eats at him. He Tian has not put Mo Guan Shan to rest; he mourns him still. Zhengxi sees it plainly: what’s done is not done. He Tian is only just beginning. 

Zhengxi swallows. ‘What will you do there? I thought you had abandoned your military career.’

‘Möngke has agreed to give me funding for my time and work.’

‘Not Töregene? Or Güyük? Have you forgotten she’s still _khatun_?’

‘Both have less interest in my work than their cousin.’

‘And what _work_ is that?’

From the house, a servant calls out—‘That is everything, m’lord!’—and He Tian glances once more at the carriage. Zhengxi attempts another look. His heart hiccups in his chest. Through the window, before the curtain closes, he can see the shadow of a face, just a glimpse, and it makes his blood go cold. 

He presses his lips together until they feel numb, and can do nothing but stare back into the blank gaze He Tian gives him when he turns away.

 _It can’t be,_ he thinks. _Surely, it can’t be._

‘I have to go,’ says He Tian. ‘It was good to see you, Zhan Zhengxi. I hope the city doesn’t become too lonesome for you.’

Zhengxi hesitates. He doesn’t ask if that’s what has happened to He Tian. He doesn’t tell him, either, that moving to Karakorum will not cure his ache. 

Instead, he nods, and says, ‘Farewell, He Tian. I’ll write.’

///

_Dear Jian Yi,_

_How goes the work with Dorji?_

_I haven’t heard from you in some months—I can only assume that no news is good news. (Please correct me if this is to the contrary.)_

_There’s little to report here. I’m sure anything I know, you will know sooner. I hear the ceasefire has little luck of lasting if Möngke is to be elected after Güyük… Please—keep your head down during these times. It already draws enough attraction as it is._

_I admit I write less to warn you of internal politics, and more because of my concerns over our mutual friend. I suspect that He Tian will reach you shortly after the time you receive this letter. Did you know Möngke had invited him to the ordu? I saw him before he left._

_Jian Yi—you must keep your eye on him, if you can. He doesn’t seem well, and I must tell you this:_

_He had a companion with him when he left. It looked… I do not think it possible, but it looked like Mo Guan Shan. I remember the dolls he created, those strange creatures of his stranger phenomena that he called ‘science’. I never saw one with its eyes open. I was certain it would remain on the bench in his workshop for the rest of its limited life._

_Jian Yi, I think he has done it. I do not know how. I hear he has not left the estate he shares with his brother in months. Not since Mo Guan Shan’s funeral. His death has changed He Tian more than I could imagine. We knew He Tian had affections for him, but they ran deeper than I believe either of us had thought._

_He is not the same and I worry for him. If you can, Jian Yi, look out for him. Perhaps we shall see each other soon._

_Ever your friend,_

_Zhan Zhengxi_

///

**Some years later.**

They take their time moving north. It takes them a month or more, stopping regularly. There is no smell of fire up here, no massacres. He Tian can indulge briefly in the illusion of peace. There is no fanfare when he arrives—why would there be? He’s a Han, the son of a traitor to his blood, the son of a would-be tyrant, if his father had his way. He Tian wonders how far north news travels.

Karakorum is grander than he expected. Ögedei’s palace is seven years old and stunning. He Tian is given his own room, his own workshop. He eats alone, works alone, has two apprentices who take his orders and ask no questions. The life is a simple one. 

It’s no different to the estate in Jinan, bar the singular window that offers him light from the ceiling and usurps his previous windowless setup. Too, there is no danger of his father calling by the estate and checking on him—no possibility of bumping into him in the city. But in Jinan He Tian cared less about running into his father and more of seeing Mo Guan Shan’s ghost. He was everywhere: the shadow in the corner of a room, the redheaded stranger ducking behind a stall at market. In the reflection of a puddle; the frequent traveller in his dreams.

He’s in them less often, now. These walls are unfamiliar to the both of them. Guan Shan never had to exist here. They didn’t run these walls as boys training for war, didn’t bathe here as young men. Guan Shan’s blood doesn’t stain him here. His voice doesn’t follow him. His eyes—

Stare straight at him. 

‘Miraculous.’

‘Thank you, Supreme Khan.’

He Tian stands back as the Mongol _khagan_ circles the doll. The wide, gold sash he wears around his robust waist catches the light through the domed ceiling, climbing upwards as if they are in a _yurt,_ flaring open to reveal, through the glass, a blue, wintry skyline. They are almost alone in the huge hall, and Möngke’s padded footsteps are soft and echo pleasantly around the space.

In the middle, He Tian’s finished piece stands placidly and meets no one’s gaze but He Tian’s. 

He Tian swallows.

‘And he thinks? He feels?’

He Tian glances at Möngke. ‘No, sir. It feels nothing at all.’

‘No pain? No emotion?’

‘Nothing at all, sir.’

Möngke turns to him, his eyebrows raised. He is a stout man, solidly built, with a small mouth and small black eyes that are made bigger by his curiosity. A thin strip of dark facial hair circles his mouth and chin.

‘You have made a perfect replica of a human being,’ says Möngke, his Mandarin precise and near-accentless. He Tian is briefly grateful he doesn’t have to pick his way through Mongolian for this audience. ‘But is not the imperfection of humanity what makes us human?’

He Tian’s lips curve. ‘I think that conversation of philosophy might be best had with Haiyun, sir. Or Liu Bingzhong. I hear both monks offer excellent advice to your brother, Kublai.’

Möngke’s eyes tighten, but he smiles. ‘I don’t want a conversation with a Buddhist, He Tian. I am having that conversation with you.’

He Tian swallows a sigh. He has no direct answer for the man’s question, but he makes a guess of what he wants to hear.

‘I didn’t want to create a human, sir. I wanted a specimen. A soldier. Something impervious to that which makes us weak.’

‘I have no need of soldiers, He Tian,’ Möngke says, almost kindly. ‘One in every ten men fights for me.’ He gestures behind him to the man that stands quietly in the corner of the hall. He Tian has seen Guo Kan before but not met him. 

He is maybe five or ten years older than He Tian, but the general is only a man. ‘The Divine Man,’ He Tian has heard others call him, thick with fear. He Tian considers him. His father would kill to be at Möngke’s side as Guo Kan is. His father would kill for less. He Tian wonders if Guo Kan—Han Chinese, not Mongolian—resents how he culls his own people in the south. 

‘General,’ He Tian says, bowing only slightly. ‘I hear you are making good progress in the west.’

The man nods. His voice is gravelly and monotone. ‘We will take Baghdad soon,’ he says.

He Tian masks his shock and turns back to Möngke. He has tried not to listen to the rumours that flit through Karakorum’s palace; he has tried not to let his mind wander to strategy and the movement of pieces on a chess board. Here in the north, it is even easier to forget that the Mongols are waging war on millions—and winning.

‘You will cut the canals?’ He Tian asks. 

Möngke hesitates, and exchanges an unidentifiable look with the general. 

‘I have left the efforts in the west to my brother, Hulagu,’ says Möngke. He turns his eye sharply to He Tian. ‘You are a very quiet man, He Tian. Not at all like I heard. Indeed, not at all like your father. Forgive me if I still cannot understand why one of the Han’s best strategists wants to while away his years in a dark study and not on the battlefield. Guo Kan would benefit from a man like you accompanying him back to Mesopotamia.’

He Tian clenches his jaw. ‘You are kind, Supreme Khan. But I have no interest in war.’

Möngke comes forward. He puts both hands on the doll’s shoulder, and it blinks—once. 

‘And yet you are presenting me with a perfect soldier,’ Möngke murmurs. 

‘My original intentions were not rooted in war, sir. They were in medicine—in healing.’

‘Ah, yes.’ Möngke drops his hands, but he does not step away from the doll. He is barely inches from it. ‘Curing disease through a host body. And have you?’

‘Sir?’

‘Found a cure for anything?’

‘We are experimenting with the flux and sweating shivers on another of my models—but it must stay isolated or it could bring illness on the whole palace.’ He Tian pauses. ‘We are still in trials, Supreme Khan.’

‘Hm,’ says Möngke. _Disappointing._ ‘And do they all look like him? With his... strange red hair?’

‘No, sir. This is the only one.’

Möngke assesses the doll, but he is talking to He Tian: ‘ _This. It._ ’ He makes a vague gesture.‘You do not see your creations as people.’

‘No, sir.’

‘But they’re evidently modelled on someone.’

He Tian pauses. ‘Sir?’

Möngke gives him a long, side-long look. ‘You cannot create something so remarkable without a muse, can you? Or did you pluck his face from thin air?’ Möngke finally steps back, and for a moment He Tian feels like he can breathe again. ‘I made enquiries about you, He Tian. Before you came here. Did you think I would fund your hobbies on the basis that you were the son and brother of _tümen_ generals?’

‘I made no presumptions, sir.’

Möngke snorts quietly, shaking his head. ‘All families have their problems. Mine is no exception.’

He Tian makes no comment. He remembers Jian Yi’s words some years ago—spoken comically in the dim light of his workshop. Guan Shan had been alive then.

_They’re a vicious lot._

‘My advisors discovered you had no love for your father. I understand the reasons were not organic.’

He Tian frowns. ‘Sir?’ he asks. _Make your point._

‘The commanding officer at the siege of Lin’an,’ says Möngke. His eyes sweep to the doll. He Tian feels himself go very still. ‘This is he, is it not? Your father’s casualty.’

‘I don’t—’

‘I heard of his father, too. The Mo family line is a troubled sort, but Mo Guan Shan… You have immortalised him forever. There is no greater honour. He is your _Antinous_.’

Briefly, He Tian closes his eyes. He has heard the story before, of the Roman emperor and his lover, Antinous, drowned in the Nile. The boy was immortalised in stone and his own religion some thousand years ago, made a god in his own right. But that isn’t what this is. The doll is not a deity; even less, it is not a human. It’s a vapid shell. An approximation of what could have been if Mo Guan Shan had lived a few more years, if his eyes had brightened with age. 

For a while now, He Tian hasn’t been able to tell if the doll is an exact replica or an idealisation. Has He Tian made him preternaturally _better_ than the real thing? Made his eyes a little bigger, his lips fuller? Has he scorned Guan Shan’s own image, played god and created a false impostor in his name?

He Tian shakes his head. He tries, with little success, to burn out the questions that have begun to swarm like a cloud of locusts in a summer sky, come to strip him bare like a husk.

‘Supreme Khan, that isn’t…’

‘We are done here, He Tian,’ says Möngke, with something of a sigh. ‘You may go.’

‘Supreme Khan—’

‘If you change your mind about the west, you must tell me. Your father has already promised most of his _tümen_ to Mesopotamia.’ Möngke glances, once, at the doll. ‘It would be a shame to lose your expertise.’

‘I’ll be sure to let you know, sir,’ He Tian says, but it doesn’t matter—the _khagan_ is already leaving the hall, and Guo Kan spares him not a single look as he follows his leader out.

///

‘How did it go?’

‘Which part?’

‘Did he smite you? Demand you leave the castle?’ Muunokhoi presses forward. ‘Will he make you his next heir?’

He Tian snorts. ‘He was suitably intrigued. Nothing more.’

‘That sounds like a, how you say, _incomplete_ version of events.’

‘Unfortunately for you, you weren’t a fly on that wall.’

‘No—my mother named me Vicious Dog. I would be too obvious.’

He Tian suppresses a laugh. He’s still unused to the Mongol naming conventions, where children are called No One or Nothing or Frightening Beast to ward off the spirits that might have taken their firstborn. Muun bares her name proudly, but resembles it not in the least. 

She is a small, compact alchemist with a young face and pink cheeks. Her body is built for movement across uneven terrain and withstanding harsh winters, and she darts around the workshop as if it is a mountainside. She barely comes to He Tian’s chest. He Tian had liked her instantly, and her acerbic wit and dry humour reminds him of someone.

He Tian leads the doll back into the bright workshop. Its movements are fluid but directionless; without He Tian’s hand on its arm it might walk through a series of hallways without stopping, unless given an order or bodily moved. Above the cloth where He Tian lays his hand, it feels almost real, as if He Tian can be deceived into thinking there is warm skin and flesh and blood beneath its shirt if he closes his eyes. 

It sits in the chair Muun pulls up for it, allowing her ministrations with a vacant stare. She runs a series of tests, and He Tian props himself against the desk and watches her work. She is proficient and consistent. If He Tian were to leave Karakorum and never to return, he knows she would carry on his work without fault. If he were to go to Baghdad with Möngke’s brother and Guo Kan, she would not fail him. 

‘What is troubling you?’

‘Hm?’ He Tian glances over at her and shakes his head. ‘Nothing.’

She gives him a presumptuous look, her hands working mindlessly. He Tian shifts his gaze to the doll, which is now staring back. He Tian sighs.

‘He knew more than I thought he would.’

Muun lifts her brows. ‘And that is bad? Did he cut your funding?’

‘He did nothing.’ He Tian’s lips press thinly. He lets his eyes wander along the brightly coloured glass vials that fill the room, tinctures acquired from Persia and Egypt and Mesopotamia, and enough books to fill a small library. A winding staircase leads up to the highest shelves, and a door at the back of the workshop leads to an enclosed space to stave off contamination. He Tian looks again to Muun, who is watching him expectantly. 

‘He’s eager for me to join Guo Kan’s forces,’ he tells her.

‘The Divine Man?’ Muun gasps. 

‘There wasn’t much that was godly about him,’ He Tian remarks dryly. ‘But I haven’t yet decided if Möngke Khan has given me an ultimatum. If I don’t go with Guo Kan, will I forfeit this?’

His eyes go to the doll. _Will I forfeit him?_

‘They will make you fight?’ Muun asks warily.

‘They want a strategist.’

‘The _khagan_ does not ask for something he wants,’ Muun says, pulling a face. ‘That which he wants is already his.’

‘Sounds like my father.’

Muun waves away the remark. ‘Your fate will be decided by Möngke Khan. There is no use dwelling on it.’

‘Thank you for your enduring confidence, Muun.’

She snorts. ‘I will let you, what is the word, ruminate? I am hungry. Are you coming? You should eat. You are getting too thin. Too many bones.’

He Tian shakes his head. ‘No, I’ll stay here. There is work to be done.’ He hesitates, makes note of the gnawing sensation in his stomach. ‘However—’

Muun rolls her eyes. ‘Yes, I will bring you a piece of _huushuur_ —’ A flourished bow. ‘—oh, supreme one.’

He Tian smirks at her as she leaves, listening to her assured, steady footsteps wander down the hall and towards the dining halls, before fading away entirely. He Tian releases a steady breath, and the room wraps itself around him like a cocoon. 

A metronome clicks away on one of the desks, smothered by books and Muun and Bolad’s writings. The older Mongol gentleman comes into the workshop only twice a week these days, and He Tian is content for him to while away his time dozing at the desk and drinking _koumiss_ while Muun and He Tian work.

He Tian looks to the doll. 

‘What do you think?’ he asks. ‘Muun would take good care of you.’

There is no response, and He Tian walks over steadily and crouches down until their eyes are level with one another.

‘He wouldn’t let me bring you. I wouldn’t want to bring you. I know you never liked riding.’ He Tian drags a hand over his mouth, his knuckles catching on the fuzz at his jawline. ‘It would be too warm for you.’

The doll blinks. Its chest rises and falls, a newly implemented imitation, its makeshift heart beating slower behind the constructed ribcage. If He Tian were to put a hand to its chest, he would feel the keen thudding of it, perfectly timed. 

The metronome ticks on.

He Tian hangs his head. 

‘What am I doing?’ he mutters. It is not the first time he’s asked himself this in the years since he arrived at Karakorum—since the approach of dawn on the watchtower at Lin’an. He finds no answer. The creature before him offers none, either. 

_It feels nothing at all, sir._

He Tian lifts his head, lets his hand go to the doll’s cheek. It does not lean into He Tian’s palm, unbothered by it. It could not differentiate the touch He Tian might use to steer it and a gesture of longing affection, a night beacon searching for a ship lost at sea. Utterly hopeless. 

His father would be ashamed. 

He Cheng, he knows, would be repulsed—confused in the least—unsure what has become of his brother.

He recalls his epithets, the sunny descriptors the townspeople of Jinan would bestow on him: charming, beguiling, mercurial at the worst of times. 

Boisterous when he was younger—to be expected. 

And now?

_You are a very quiet man, He Tian. Not at all like I heard._

He still recognises himself in a mirror—there is that, at least. But he knows if he were to hear himself or watch himself there would be some confliction. Sometimes he considers making himself, a great effort in egoism, just to emulate what he used to be. But he’s already doing that. The doll, if it were perfect—if it could speak, snarl, think—would bring him back to himself. He doesn’t need another version of himself: he needs Guan Shan. 

He touches the doll, squeezing its knee, running his fingertips over its wrist, feeling the malaise inside of him at the non-reaction. It doesn’t care about his cursory touches. He Tian would welcome a strike now, Guan Shan snapping at his idle affection, his pressing for a response of any kind. 

He tries to find the soft pliancy he’d discovered in Jinan, weeks before the siege of Lin’an. He tries to find that which yielded to him gladly in their numbered days—He Tian had been arrogant, he knows now, to have thought there would be so many more. Even on the tower, Guan Shan had been soft, folded into him and against him. There had been no better place for Guan Shan’s passing but with his head pressed to He Tian’s chest.

He Tian sees it now: Guan Shan’s pliant form folded against him as if they were lovers reclining on a couch, or shielded from the midday sun beneath the boughs of a cherry tree, He Tian’s back pressed to the trunk. But He Tian can’t romanticise it for long—no, he remembers the blood. 

No, the doll gives him nothing. The rust-coloured gaze bores into his own. Its pupils dilate a fraction, the light above them shifting as the sun is obscured by a cloud, the workshop rendered in shadow, and that is all. 

‘Very well,’ He Tian mutters, unfolding from his crouch and standing straight. ‘The work continues.’

///

**One month later.**

He’s leaving the workshop for Guo Kan’s study when Jian Yi finds him. 

He’s red-cheeked from the cold, his slight frame hidden beneath the layers of his _deel_ and the furs around his shoulders. In so many years of existing in the palace, He Tian has hardly seen his childhood friend, an easy thing to do. 

He has heard that Jian Yi’s protegee, Dorji, has grown increasingly unwell and might not make it through the winter. His father, Kublai—Möngke’s brother and likely heir—has been to the workshop before, but He Tian had only the means to tell him that there was no cure for his son’s weak body born too early. He won’t be surprised to hear if Jian Yi has had orders to abandon his teachings with Dorji and move to the next pool of eligible successors with diligent selection.

‘I heard you were leaving,’ says Jian Yi, breathing a little heavily. He puts a hand unconsciously on He Tian’s arm as if to stop him from running. ‘You’re going to join Guo Kan?’

He Tian snorts quietly. ‘Nothing remains a secret for long, does it?’

‘They’re going to slaughter millions, He Tian.’

‘I’d rather face a sword on the battlefield than in the halls of this palace.’

‘Baghdad won’t be a battlefield. It’ll be Lin’an all over again and a hundred times more. Every woman raped and bodies in pits. You’ll smell the rot of it in the air. But, fine—’ Jian Yi shrugs, holds his hands up. ‘Speak of the honour of it all.’

He Tian smiles. ‘I fully anticipate that I won’t return if I leave with Guo Kan. There’s no honour at all.

Jian Yi gapes, lurching forward slightly.‘He Tian—’

He Tian lifts his brows. ‘Careful, Jian Yi. I’m not sure what advice it is that you’re giving. You made no objections when we moved further into Song years back—to Kaifeng and Chengdu.’ 

He does not say Lin’an. Jian Yi has broken the barrier by saying it, and He Tian won’t jinx it twice. The city’s name has become taboo, carrying enough weight that He Tian buckles beneath it sometimes, not a city on his shoulders but an entire universe.

‘There is a difference between absorbing a city like Kaifeng into the empire and committing a massacre,’ says Jian Yi.

‘Is this where I wear my father’s face and tell you they’re both the same?’

Jian Yi shakes his head. ‘You’re so difficult to find here. I didn’t come to argue. If you’re leaving then I can’t stop you.’ His mouth tightens. ‘You know your father is in the west, too, don’t you? The _tümen_ left a month ago.’

‘I know.’

Jian Yi pauses. He opens his mouth, then closes it. ‘I wanted to give you—’

He breaks off. Behind He Tian, the door to the workshop opens, and the doll steps out. 

He Tian frowns at it. Did Muun send it out? Or Bolad? Surely it wouldn’t wander out into the hall of its own accord. It has no note in its hands, and only stands before the now-closed door with its usual blank stare.

‘Oh.’

He Tian looks to Jian Yi, who has staggered back slightly. A hand has gone to his chest.

‘Xixi had said—but I didn’t think…’ 

He Tian lifts a brow. ‘You saw it in Jinan years ago.’

‘But this is…’ His voice drops to a stage whisper: ‘He’s _walking_.’

‘It can hear you,’ He Tian says dryly. ‘It obeys command.’

‘He Tian—’

‘It’ll remain here. Muun will oversee the work in my absence.’

‘You don’t intend to come back.’

He Tian shrugs. ‘Muun will oversee the work in my _permanent_ absence.’

Jian Yi puts a hand over his own mouth, as if he doesn’t know what to say and knows that what could come out will only be the wrong thing. He looks at the doll as if it’s hiding a knife behind its back, waiting for it to strike. He Tian finds his sudden fear almost comical. 

‘It’s—He’s—’

‘Yes, Jian Yi. It looks like Guan Shan.’

‘You’ve brought him back to life!’ Jian Yi sputters. Then, he hisses: _‘You’ve raised the dead.’_

He Tian brushes him off. ‘I’ve done nothing of the sort. Don’t overreact. If it were really him, would he allow this?’ 

It’s almost shameful how still the doll remains while He Tian’s lips move against its own. It’s worse than being struck; there’s no thrill, no sharp high. No, there’s only—nothing. 

He Tian steps away. The doll’s face is unchanging. There is a slight redness to its lips, steadily fading. It’s entirely unbothered by He Tian’s kiss. 

He’s never tried that before, and he brushes off the plangent thud of disappointment. Any lingering, heady anticipation has been swiftly cauterised. Still, it aches. 

He Tian smiles. 

‘I…’ Jian Yi swallows, his eyes darting between the two of them. ‘I suppose not.’

He Tian rolls his eyes. ‘Satisfied?’

‘That’s not—’ Jian Yi _tsks_ , frustrated and flustered.‘Here,’ he says, digging in one of his pockets and out a hand.. ‘This is why I was looking for you. I wanted to give this back before you left.’

He Tian stares at the small offering in the centre of Jian Yi’s palm. For a moment, he barely even recognises it. His breath catches in his throat. He Tian thought it had been buried with him. 

He wets his lips. ‘How…?’

‘Xixi gave it to me to pass on,’ Jian Yi tells him. ‘You were supposed to have it after his funeral, but you’d left. I’ve had it all this time.’

He Tian nods. He remembers: his father’s comment, a carefully cultivated and deliberate martyrdom. He hears Möngke’s words from weeks ago about Hadrian’s boy lover, the religion created in Antinous’ name. Guan Shan would despise it, if he were here.

He Tian recalls how he’d run from the funeral, sought solace in the darkness of his workshop—in the doll that he’d destroyed and pieced back together with tender attentiveness, an effort in redemption. Has he found it? He doesn’t think so. He knows he’s searching for something, still. He knows he wouldn’t agree to go with Guo Kan if he had. 

Slowly, He Tian reaches out a hand. He lifts the hairpiece from Jian Yi’s palm. 

Guan Shan had been wearing it when he died; it’s the only part of him that stayed clean. The rest of his clothes had been burned, stained eternally red. 

‘It’ll be good luck in Mesopotamia,’ says Jian Yi. The hairpiece digs into He Tian’s closed palm as Jian Yi tugs him into a hug. It’s brief, a little too tight—then over. Jian Yi is chewing on his lower lip when he pulls away, eyes glossy. ‘I know it has been difficult for you since—I should have—’

‘Don’t, Jian Yi,’ He Tian sighs. He hands the hairpiece to the doll, which takes it. ‘We have both run our courses.’

///

_Dearest Xixi,_

_I write to enquire as to your wellness, and if you still plan to come and visit the palace next month, as I earnestly hope you will? You must know Möngke’s brother, Kublai, has headed west into Dali and Möngke will soon come south to take Sichuan. I hear he has sights set on Diaoyucheng. We know how this will end._

_Is there any part of old-Song that is now not at war? More importantly, I suppose, is your tenure as a scholar still safe? How long before you are forced to put away your ink and reach for a sword? Jinan must be overrun with soldiers now—or emptied to its basin. The thought of it saddens me. I pray that they have left the springs untouched; I remember its unkept beauty—so many memories._

_I ask you again: come north. Come join me here. You will have a whole suite for your writings—you will have a world of libraries at your disposal. You’ll have me. Perhaps… Is that why you still stay there in Jinan? Perhaps you’ve met someone and think I won’t approve. Is that it, Xixi? I won’t judge—I give you my word._

_If you haven’t—and you are still alone—you have more reason now than ever to find a new surrounding for yourself. (By which I mean here, with me. Is that too forward?) The reason is this: He Tian is leaving Karakorum, and I will be alone once more. I haven’t seen him in some time. You’d think it would be inevitable, but between my teachings and He Tian’s work, we barely cross one another’s paths more than once a year. At first, I thought he was avoiding me, but no—he is lost to his work. He is lost to himself._

_Xixi, I remember what you wrote about years ago—about the doll. No, you hadn’t imagined it. We knew he had created something in Mo Guan Shan’s image; we saw it in his study. I’d teased Guan Shan about it, mocked him. I feel a sense of shame at the memory now._

_I hadn’t anticipated that He Tian would try to replace him with this silent, non-sentient thing that follows him like a dog at his heel. I have just seen him now and knew only that I must write to you immediately. Does He Tian know it isn’t him? Does he know it is nothing like the person Mo Guan Shan was? To the eye, they are identical, but Guan Shan was a volatile, fraught creature—neither silent nor complicit._

_It worries me. I say this not to put guilt upon you, but I know no one with whom I can discuss these worries. He Tian alone will not hear them. I cannot write to He Tian’s brother or father; they will either ignore it or do something of which I’m sure neither of us would approve. He Tian leaves with Guo Kan in the coming days. He is certain he will not return. I worry, too, that he’ll face his father in Mesopotamia and they will reenact the watchtower in Lin’an. I do not know who will be the victor. What do your books tell you? I know they don’t hold the future, but I would hope there could be something we can draw from them? Why write our histories if we cannot learn from them?_

_Perhaps there are no answers. I will stop troubling you with the questions. I await your insight, in person or in a letter. Your presence will be most welcome here if you still feel inclined to attend. Truthfully, I miss it very much—I am wayward without it._

_Unchangeably yours,_

_Jian Yi_

///

He Tian walks through the courtyard to Guo Kan’s rooms after Jian Yi leaves, the doll at his heels. It is a cold day and snow will fall soon, covering the palace and all its vacant gardens with a white sheet of brief nothingness. He Tian understands why there is talk of moving the _ordo_ south, now more than ever: it’s easy to come outside on a winter’s day and believe the silence will be maddeningly permanent, the cold never ending.

For now, there’s a little chatter around the place, and He Tian can hear the clatter of horse hooves on cobbles somewhere around the palace’s exterior along with the quiet murmurs of servants and staff as they go about their day. In the air he smells the damp stench of manure trying to rot in the cold, and the heat of cooked mutton coming from a nearby kitchen. 

He’s eager to escape the cold, but he cannot help but to stop beneath the Silver Tree, a strange, huge sculpture of metal that looms over the courtyard and stretches its boughs out towards the surrounding buildings. Möngke had hired a man from France to piece the thing together, inorganic and perpetually in bloom. He Tian has never liked it; he cannot help but look at it. 

‘I won’t miss this,’ he murmurs. ‘Strange, isn’t it?’

He expects no answer from the doll, and squints up at the silvery, filigree limbs that network above him like a lattice. It had taken the Parisian only a few weeks, and He Tian shies from the rope-like serpents that wind around its trunk and the metallic automaton angel that stands above the boughs with a trumpet held aloft. 

At banquets, He Tian has seen how vodka or white _koumiss_ pours from the serpents’ mouths, heralded by the sound of the trumpet and flowing down into the large basin at the foot of the tree trunk, readily scooped into over-filled cups. It is large enough to swim in.

If Möngke had wanted, He Tian could have made him something that would have stood there perpetually—something beautiful and eternal. Something almost human. Instead, the angelic creature is motionless and made of metal, and no one can taste the temptation of the false fruits that hang from the tree’s branches.

_You have immortalised him forever._

He Tian winces at the comment; it plays still on his mind. So too does the shocked judgment in Jian Yi’s grey gaze. Of course he cannot understand, but He Tian, with cruel satisfaction, knows that if something were to happen Zhengxi, Jian Yi would come pawing at his door by sundown. 

If He Tian’s work were public, how many widows and childless mothers and orphaned children would he have begging for a reincarnation of the lost? Indeed, best he keeps the doll near to him. 

He Tian shakes his head at himself, minutely, and lights a match from a tinderbox he keeps in his pocket. The first inhale from his pipe warms him. 

Behind him, a rustle. 

He Tian frowns and turns. The day is cold and the courtyard is empty; there is nowhere else it could come from. He lifts an eyebrow at the doll, still unsettled by its strangeness—the way it left the workshop of its own accord and now follows him to the courtyard.

Its mouth is opening and shuttering, a strange shuddering. A hissing sound comes from the back of its throat.

 _Is it breaking?_ He Tian wonders, his eyes widening. _Have I broken it?_

‘Pr…’

Unconsciously, He Tian takes a step towards it. 

‘Pre… Pre-tt…’ 

The pipe falls from He Tian’s lips and splinters into pieces on the cobbles.

‘Pre-tty. Pr… Pretty.’

He Tian feels faint. 

The sound is only an approximation of Guan Shan’s voice, a rough husk. Really, it sounds nothing like him at all. It says it again, and He Tian draws in a breath and holds it. 

_The tree,_ He Tian thinks at first, sure that the doll is admiring the tree’s ugly, monstrous beauty. But no. His eyes are thick with sadness, something mournful and unnameable, and they are not on the tree at all.

Instead, they are on the hairpiece he holds in his palm, held out like an offering. 

_Luck. Affection,_ he’d said. And then: _You look pretty._

**Author's Note:**

> Please remember to **kudos, comment, or check out more ways of supporting me[on Tumblr](http://agapaic.tumblr.com)** if you enjoy my work! 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading and stay safe!


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